The Fanboy Review

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World- Slayer 1 T-Shirt, Review

Marc — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:36:08 +0000

Scott Pilgrim… the last volume just came out, and it was awesome. And soon the movie will be out. And a game. The game is based on the books but labeled for the movie. And because the movie is coming out we are getting shirts! And this is a shirt based on the game, which anyone who doesn’t know about the game will think is from the movie! And yes, I absolutely wrote all that despite not needing to. Why? Because…

Mighty Fine is doing a whole line of Scott Pilgrim t-shirts. I wish I had something witty to say, but I can’t because I used all my power ups on that opening paragraph, not to mention fighting the urge to use the companies name as a pun to talk about the shirt.

I wish I had a better way to start this review than just saying this is an awesome shirt. It’s made out of a really nice soft material. It makes me think back to pajamas as a kid. It’s a really soft material, but it doesn’t feel overly fluffy. It gives the shirt a really nice feel to it and it’s really comfortable. It’s the type of shirt that you can easily imagine keeping around the house as just a comfortable thing to throw on or wear it to bed. I can’t say enough good things about the material itself.

The images themselves are silk-screened on. The colors are all bright and bold and very vivid. The primary image of the shirt is Scott from the upcoming video game in his default pose. It’s a good image if a bit ‘basic’. One nice touch is that the outline isn’t silk-screened onto the shirt. The outline is the shirt itself. It likely won’t be noticed by many people, but I just found that a really awesome touch that integrates the image into the shirt really well. The video game version of the logo (and the Slayer 1 text) is silk-screened on just as nicely and adds some flair. Although you do have to wonder if any Scott Pilgrim fan would need to see the logo to know what it is. The logo may have worked better printed small on the back (the back of the shirt doesn’t have anything on it) although I’ve never been sure if I liked stuff on the back of shirts or not when it isn’t needed.

The shirt doesn’t have a tag to scratch or annoy you; everything is printed on the inside of the shirt. Washing instructions, size, everything is there; even a Scott Pilgrim logo. It’s a nice touch to add to the shirt.

It’s a great shirt. I really don’t have much to say beyond that. It’s worth making sure this is the Scott Pilgrim shirt you want if you are only gonna get one since they are doing a whole line of them. Mighty Fine did a great job on it. They did such a great job that I feel obligated to go to the gym for the next few weeks since I’ve gained a few pounds recently and the shirt was a little tight. I’d like to wear it when I go to see the movie. It may even replace my Jack Kirby Hulk shirt as my normal shirt to wear when I don’t need to wear something fancy. Or maybe it’ll be the one of game Scott with a guitar next time I’m in a mall…

Not gonna go with grades this time around because it seems a bit to weird to have grades for ‘material, printing, etc’, but I’d definitely give the shirt an A. B+ if you think Scott’s pose is a bit to vanilla..

See, I went the whole review without saying this was a mighty fine t-shirt…

This t-shirt will be available through Hot Topic and We Love Fine.

Perhaps we will be lucky and there will be a Scott Pilgrim related contest soon. ‘wink’ ‘nudge’ ‘poke in the eye’ No promises though.

Copyright information under ad. This shirt was reviewed using a screener.

Reviewing a shirt was kind of weird but it was fun. Movie can’t come soon enough. Make sure you go see it.

Also… is it called a screener when it’s a shirt? I mean… DVDs are called screeners when you get them to review them. What is a shirt for review called? Is there some sort of terminology or is just a ’shirt for review’?

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World™ & © Universal Studios. Licensed by Universal Studios Licensing. All Rights Reserved.

Maria Watches Over Us: Season Four, Early Review

Marc — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 01:46:55 +0000

Right Stuf/Nozomi/TRSI/any other name you can come up with is back with another DVD release. And this time it’s a return to Maria Watches Over Us.

Season 4 of Marimite (ha ha, short show nicknames make the job easier!) returns to a few different major and minor plot threads that in various ways reach back to every season. TRSI loves the niche, but can Marimite hold onto its audience through a fourth season?

Marimite Season 4 has great packaging that matches the other seasons, switching to a pink color theme (each season has had its own color for the packaging, leading to packaging that is both distinct for each season, but also packaging that matches.) We start with a nice chipboard box. The box has the logo and nice pictures in the same place as they were on every other season. The only oddity with the box itself appears to be a small inconsistency with earlier seasons. On the first two seasons, the boxes are listed as ‘Season One’ and ‘Season Two’. Season Four is listed as ‘4th Season’. The third season was listed the same was as the fourth, so seemingly it is a running change. It isn’t a flaw or anything negative; it’s just an odd little change I noticed looking through artwork for the seasons on the Nozomi/TRSI website. The one other thing worth noting on the box itself is a distinct change with one of the pictures on the box. The first three seasons had one side be an image of Yumi and Sachiko. The other side would be a group shot of some sort. This season replaces the Yumi and Sachiko side with Yumi and Toko. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when you consider the plot of this season it comes across as a thoughtful change to make.

The cases themselves are nice clear thinpak cases. The inserts all continue the theme of the box with good character artwork on the front inside of a frame. The back of each insert has a few screenshots and a good description of the franchise in general. The one issue with the description is that it isn’t specific to the events of the season, but rather a very generic description of the concept behind the series. Having a description that has neither an explanation of this season, nor of any of the characters in the series itself just comes across as far too generic. The flip side of the inserts are just plain white. The packaging overall is very good, but a few small issues keep it from being perfect.

Marimite Season 4 is a great continuation of the franchise for fans. It also makes a few distinct changes that the characters themselves pick up on and mention without breaking the fourth wall. Sachiko and Yumi being sœurs (quick explanation for those not familiar with the franchise- sœur is the relationship girls in the school have between older and younger students to help guide them through their years at the school) no longer provides any actual drama in and of itself (the last bit of that having been in season 3.) This leaves a feeling of calmness and even maturity among what had been the driving force of the series. It forces the series to slightly evolve with some primary characters slightly moving to the background and no longer being the center of the relationships and dramas. This also goes back to the cover change where Sachiko no longer appears large and in front of the cover with Yumi. This time around Toko takes a more center placement with Yumi’s sœur problem being front and center, with Toko being the person that Yumi wants to choose, but Toko may or may not have other things in mind. At times she comes across as someone who wants to spend time with Yumi, and at other times attempts to antagonize her in ways that flash back to past seasons when you almost wondered if Toko would be a villian character. There are other plot threads running through the season, but the primary plot is about Yumi and Toko and what exactly their relationship is. Early in the season we are told Toko has a secret and if Yumi finds it out she will gain a greater understanding of Toko. We get to find out that secret before Yumi does, and once we are told all the pieces fall into place on who Toko is. It’s sort of like finding that one puzzle piece. Once you add it to the puzzle, all the other pieces just seem to slide into place perfectly with no trouble.

Marimite is a well written series, but it can be hard to not want to yell out lesbian jokes with how the characters act sometimes. Obviously these things go back to the novels and that was how it was written, and that’s fine. It’s just a bit better to come into Marimite prepared. Bit easier to keep suspension of disbelief when you know about it ahead of time.

The video on Marimite season 4 isn’t great. Season 4 of Marimite is 480 and interlaced. Often lines will appear a bit fuzzy, then there will be a scene change and everything will appear fantastic. Then it will switch again and things are fuzzy again. Some panning scenes are very jumpy also, along with ghosting (a few scenes are particular noticeable.) These problems are likely source issues based on complaints from Japanese fans when the series originally aired about animation problems. We know Nozomi waited to release the series until better quality DVD masters were available due to those problems. Should also mention that since some people cared about it in regards to Code Geass, that Marimite does keep the Pizza Hut logos when they appear. Despite the problems the show is still watchable, but it does bring to mind the recent Toradora debacle in a few ways.

One last thing worth mentioning is that the DVDs used are single layer. Episodes are split between disks in numbers that guarantee that over-compression isn’t the source of any video problems. This was likely done to lead to a classier and fancier looking packaging.

edit- Looking at a few sites that translate Japanese articles and Japanese forum discussions it appears there were quite a few complaints about early DVD volumes of season 4 in Japan. Unfortunately I can’t find confirmation if the lack of complaints on later volumes was because the quality improved or if fans were simply resigned to them.

Audio is quite clean and matches the series well. It receives a single Dolby track at 192k. The audio isn’t spectacular, but even if it had been, I’m not sure it would have been noticeable on Marimite. Its single audio track is more than serviceable.

The subtitles on Marimite continue the theme that we’ve gotten for the series thus far. One track is translated and has honorifics translated into English equivalents. The second track keeps honorifics intact. The translation is good and I didn’t notice spelling errors while watching. The only thing worth mentioning is that in the DVD shorts you only receive the fully translated track with no option to keep honorifics.

Marimite continues to have great extras. We start off with excellent liner notes. The liner notes explain certain aspects of the show and Japanese culture that may not be immediately obvious to the viewer. After that we get the expected clean opening and closing. Season 4 introduces a new opening theme replacing the one that Marimite has had thus far. Nothing wrong with the new one, just a bit odd to have a new one after three seasons. After that we get to what makes the extras specials: eleven shorts. Each of these shorts run under a minute and provides a hilarious take on something that happens in the series. The shorts are still great fun, but at times seem a bit less on target than the shorts for prior seasons (which makes sense when you consider how the show itself evolved for this season, giving less of a static target for the shorts to make fun of.) Marimite has some great extras that help it stand out a bit.

Maria Watches Over Us Season Four is just as good as early seasons of the series, which is to say it is fantastic. It feels different just in noticing the very different focus this season has. It’s a great series, but jumping on here would be a disservice to anyone wanting to view it. You really need to start at the beginning. Fans of the series probably don’t need me to tell them this is a must see. It’s a great drama with a good sense of humor.

Show: A (It’s a great new season of a show that has always been quite good.)
Packaging: A (Good and relatively consistent with past seasons. Only obvious thing to mention is that the flip side of the inserts could have had some nice artwork on them.)
Video Quality: C+ (The video is disappointing for a show that only aired a year and a half ago. The general lack of action and high movement saves it from getting a lower score.)
Audio Quality: B+ (Audio sounds good.)
Extras: A (The shorts add a great bit of value to the series. The liner notes also help with appreciation of certain details quite a bit.)

Overall (not an average): A- (I really enjoy the show, but the video does take this one down a notch. Based on your TV you may not notice anything, but I expect the video will annoy a few people.)

Gallery and copyright information under ad. All caps are lossless PNGs taken in MPC-HC, feel free to request more. (Caps are sized 853×480 so as to display properly on computer monitors, they were modified to this resolution via Photoshop CS4 as MPC-HC takes screen captures at 720×480 on the disc. Having the caps be 853×480 makes them appear at the properly intended aspect ratio.)

This show was reviewed using a screener in retail packaging.

This DVD is labeled to work in Region 1.

MARIA WATCHES OVER US (Maria-sama ga Miteru) 4th Season © OYUKI KONNO / SHUEISHA • YAMAYURIKAI III Licensed by d-rights Inc.

Toradora!: Volume One- Premium Edition, Early Review

Marc — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 08:52:21 +0000

A new company arrives with a series that has a bit of a following.

Toradora! is finally coming to the USA via NIS America. Rather than just getting the vanilla treatment though, NIS is going the premium route for their anime releases. Does Toradora! (last time I use the exclamation point…) end up being a good start for them?

The packaging for Toradora is quite nice. It’s more like what you get when you buy a DC Comics Absolute Edition book than an anime set. And it’s quite brilliant packaging (fantastic that NIS had press assets, cause while I’m trying to improve my camera skills… well, let’s just say their pictures came out way better than mine.) In the box that holds everything we get a nice big image of the primary cast. The print and color quality is very good. On the backside we get a purpley monochrome version of the front picture. Inside of the box you get the book and the disk cases. They actually slide in from the top, which in a tall case like this is something a bit new and interesting. The only problem with the main box is that if you want to stand it up on a bookshelf and slide it in sideways, there is copyright info on one side and… nothing on the other. It would have been nice if the show logo was on that side for display purposes, or maybe silhouettes of the characters like they appear in the intro.

Each of the disks is stored in a basic clear thinpak. The cases themselves are good quality. They won’t give you any problems holding or releasing the disks. The art on the front of each is good art used on the cover of volume one and volume two in Japan. On the back of each you get a basic description of the disk contents and some screenshots. Unfortunately there is a mistake here. The screenshots for episodes five, six and seven on disk one are reused for episodes eight, nine, and ten on disk two. Another thing to note is that the case actually lists the disks as letterboxed widescreen but the video itself is anamorphic. On the positive though, each insert on the other side has a monochrome version of another Japanese volume (three and four.) The packaging is quite good, but it is a bit disappointing that a few bits were missed in quality control.

The menu for Toradora is quite clean, and as a bonus it is styled similarly to the Japanese disks. Everything is done in clean readable text with sub-menus getting rounded buttons. An instrumental of the theme is playing. A simple menu, but quite pleasing. Should probably mention though that for whatever reason it seems to skip the menu and just go straight to the episode when you play the disk. For some people that’ll be a positive, for others a negative.

Toradora is a fun series that does a decent job of mixing comedy and drama. It doesn’t really break any new ground or even try to. It does something we’ve seen plenty of other times, and just does it as well as it can. It results in an enjoyable series.

The primary reason the series is enjoyable is because of the characters. The two main characters work well as a duo because they both polar opposites and mirrors. Ryuji is a hardworking guy who everyone assumes is a delinquent because of his ‘evil looking eyes’. Taiga is a tough girl who looks cute. They both have crushes and haven’t gotten the courage to say anything about it. And ironically (is this sorta plot still considered ironic with anime?) their crushes are each the other’s best friend. Due to various events they end up helping each other (mostly Ryuji helping Taiga…)

While I wouldn’t say the show itself is realistic, the characters act in a manner that will likely remind people of themselves and their worries and various things they did when they were teenagers. Halfway through the set a childhood friend of one of the crushes appears which provides a foil for Ryuji and Taiga: For Taiga it’s someone to headbutt with. For Ryuji it’s someone who doesn’t necessarily listen to him and pushes other potential paths for him and things to consider and deal with.

The show is entertaining and we get its version of the expected tropey cliche episodes that many series go with (at the pool, beach house, school festival, etc.), but the way it does makes them seem fresh in that there is always plot and characterization behind events. It’s truly a quality series. I’d likely say even if you don’t like this type of show it’s still worth a look as I’ll go ahead and place a wager that the characters will draw you in.

Video is where Toradora has the biggest problem. Encoded at 480 and interlaced, Toradora has quite a few video problems. Colors have been brightened compared to the Japanese release, which isn’t to big a deal or unexpected. The problem is the blurring, haloing and edge enhancement. It makes lines appear fuzzy and many other things appear murky. While the comparison image of Minorin clearly shows the R1 being substandard in nearly every way to its Japanese counterpart, the lower comparison of Ami shows that some stuttering from the R2 does not appear on the R1 disk, perhaps suggesting an entirely different video source than the R2. It’s also worth mentioning that the framing is slightly different on the R1, with a cleaner frame on all four edges. And I should probably note, those I used in the comparison just happened to be some of the few lossless screenshots I could find of the R2. The video in the release isn’t great, and honestly isn’t even good, but it isn’t horrible or unwatchable.

Update- NIS America has announced a recall program due to the video problems. When the new disks are available I plan on doing an updated review.

The audio on the other hand has no real problems, even if it isn’t fantastic. For Toradora we get a Dolby 2.0 track at 192k. Audio is clear and clean. It’s about on par with what is expected for anime DVDs. It’s probably helped by the fact that a good chunk of the series is characters talking and interacting with each other.

Being sub only, Toradora obviously does not have a dub (although if it’s obvious you have to wonder why I felt the need to say that…) The subtitles are quite clean and readable and I found that they read very naturally. At times slang appeared to be used, and since I can’t understand Japanese I can’t say if that is accurate or a bit of creative translating. Regardless, I felt it was worth mentioning because the subtitle script reads very well and made the experience more enjoyable. Names are kept in Japanese order and honorifics are used in the subtitles. It’s a subtitle track that stands out compared to some recent DVDs. The only thing I can recommend for future NIS releases is perhaps using a secondary color for when two people are talking at once, especially in a show like Toradora where characters often have arguments and discussions where people talk over each other.

It’s also worth mentioning… I tested the disk in multiple players, both standalone and on a computer. With one PC based player subtitles had a bit of crossover happening a decent amount (but played fine on all the other software players I tried.) It appears to be a glitch with how that player reads the timing of the subtitles (possibly with a slight error on the disk itself that most players can correct, but I’m not sure about that.) Just be aware the issue may exist and if you run into it, play it on something else.

Toradora has decent extras. We have the standard clean opening and closing. Both of these are interesting catchy songs with good animation behind them, so it is definitely nice to get that clean version of each. We also get two shorts with the characters as chibis with minor animal features. These are comedy shorts that are interesting if not exceptionally great. After that we get the book that helps make this package the premium release it is. It’s wider than it is tall, much like I remember Garfield collections be, but with a hardcover. We get lots of artwork with characters in various outfits, descriptions, character charts, and episode details for all the episodes in the set. It adds a significant amount to the package and is beyond the bonus items that were the norm when we had special and limited edition releases for nearly every show.

Toradora is one of the initial wave of releases from NIS America. It’s better than the first attempts we’ve expected from a few anime companies that jumped in feet first and vanished relatively quickly. Despite being a premium package the price isn’t as high as some of the more niche releases we saw from Bandai Visual USA, and is a small price premium over normal anime releases nowadays. The release only really has two flaws. The first is that the video quality is relatively poor for such a recent show. The other is that the packaging could have used one more round of quality control.

The show itself is great and I’d even say it’s a little bit special among a genre that tends to have quite a bit of trash. For a first try NIS didn’t hit the ball out of the park, but I’d say they are holding their own (a soccer reference would be more timely, but everything I could think of has to do with those damn horns.)

Show: A (It’s a great show. Worth a look)
Packaging: A (Great packaging, definitely worthy of that premium label. Reminiscent of premium graphic novel releases. Would have been an A+ if not for a few mistakes.)
Video Quality: C (The video could definitely be improved. It doesn’t look great, but it doesn’t look horrible either. Just disappointing that it wasn’t better.)
Audio Quality: B+ (Audio is clean and sounds good.)
Extras: A (The book alone adds so much to this release, but then you add on the shorts and you have quite a nice package here.)

Overall (not an average): B+ (It’s a good release for a great show. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a great first try and I think it’s a show that has a lot of rewatchability due to the fact that it’s just enjoyable.)

Gallery and copyright information under ad. All caps are lossless PNGs taken in MPC-HC, feel free to request more. (Caps are sized 853×480 so as to display properly on computer monitors, they were modified to this resolution via Photoshop CS4 as MPC-HC takes screen captures at 720×480 on the disc. Having the caps be 853×480 makes them appear at the properly intended aspect ratio.)

This show was reviewed using a screener in retail packaging.

This DVD is labeled to work in Region 1.

Toradora! – ©YUYUKO TAKEMIYA / ASCII MEDIA WORKS / TORADORA PRODUCT COMMITTEE

Otaku in Review Podcast Episode 16

Marc — Sat, 29 May 2010 03:18:59 +0000

I’m a guest in the new episode of the Otaku in Review podcast.

Go check it out

Otaku in Review Podcast Episode 16: PAL has nothing to do with it

Lost Outside America: Space Adventure Cobra

Samuel Savage — Wed, 19 May 2010 22:56:41 +0000

Greetings viewers! The name’s Samuel Savage but I’m better known as PirateBeck these days. You probably haven’t heard of me before and considering my line of work is very different to that of a reviewer, I can’t honestly blame you. However, it’s something I’ve had an interest in for quite some time so Marc’s giving me a shot. Anyway, to cut the introduction short, I’m from the United Kingdom and while we may not get that many series released here due to many different licensing issues, we have been lucky enough to receive some exclusive anime releases, such as the upcoming Summer Wars and Professor Layton movies. So I’m here to tell you what’s worth importing and since it hasn’t been released yet in the USA, I’m going to touch upon a shonen oldie…

Space Adventure Cobra is the film adaptation of the manga series of the same name, originally released in the late 70s. The movie itself was released in 1982 and I believe it’s an adaptation of the entire manga story (don’t quote me on that). The UK disc was released in August 2008 and can be currently ordered from Amazon UK for around £3.99 ($5.95 as of May 2009). Is it even worth that? Let’s find out…

So let’s start off with the packaging. There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about the front cover itself, just a huge logo in the middle surrounded by space background and text telling us about Cobra is the most wanted man on the planet. The back cover is slightly more interesting; with the art of Cobra branching out with alternately colored line art, surrounded by text and screenshots from the film. However, it’s here we find our first problem as the running time is listed as being 69 minutes long despite the actual running time being 99 minutes. Oops.

The main menu itself is just as bland as the cover, showing us footage from the film while looped music plays in the background. The main menu gives us the four options of “Play movie”, “Scene Selection”, “Audio Options” and “Trailers”. I would recommend skipping the trailers as they all pretty boring and bland to watch (The Naruto DVD one is the highlight, as it simply states “NARUTO UNLEASHED PART 1 OUT NOW!” followed by two minutes of random scenes and background music from the series. I’m dead serious).

The film itself you ask? As I mentioned earlier, if this really is a condensed version of the manga, it shows. The film is messy and sometimes very hard to follow. It starts off with a bounty hunter named Jane Flower (You can clearly tell this is a product of the 70s from that alone) capturing a wanted criminal and taking him to police headquarters. Cobra spots Flower in a bar along the way and, instantly taking an interest, follows after her. They proceed to talk for a few minutes about how “Cobra died a long time ago” and “you can’t be him”. Of course, he uses the exact same ‘psycho gun’ and she instantly realizes he’s the real deal. They then proceed to make out. Trippy.

Now, that’s just the first 15 minutes and it honestly didn’t capture my interest the first time around. I won’t go into detail with the rest of the plot but involves a very annoying love story, a villain that goes nowhere fast once the usual shonen fight has been had and then, the film just… ends. There’s no real resolution to the story at hand and to be frank, it was just bad writing. I honestly wish we could have seen some of Cobra’s past since it’s stated he died and had plastic surgery to rebuild his entire body. Why couldn’t we have gotten that film instead, it sounds far more interesting?

Not only is the film bad, the video transfer is even worse. It looks like it was either taken from a master that had Clingfilm still over it or a very old VHS tape when transferred to a digital source. There is dirt everywhere, the screen has a darkened bar around the left side of the footage and then take in the usual (poorly done for anime) 24/30fps to 25fps transfer, it really makes the film look old and dated. To make matters worse, the DVD packaging lists the film as being 4:3. The only part of the film that actually is 4:3 is the TMS logo at the start, with the rest being in a matted 16:9 ratio. It doesn’t help that half of the trailers are in 16:9. Nice going Manga Entertainment.

The audio however fairs far better than the video. We are presented with an English 2.0 Dolby track at 224Kbps and a Japanese 5.1 Dolby one at 448Kbps. While the Japanese track has that extra boom that a 2.0 can’t produce, I actually found the English track far more interesting. I found the differences in the acting and voice talent to be an improvement over the Japanese one (like the robotic tone effect added to the character Lady) and Dan Worren as the ever lovable hero Cobra (best known as Byakuya Kuchiki from Bleach these days). I should also note that the dub included on the disc is the original American dub directed by the late Carl Macek and not the Manga UK dub, which included a soundtrack composed by Yello.

I briefly touched upon the extras listed as them simply being trailers. Included are trailers for: Naruto the series and the first movie, Bleach, Buso Renkin, Death Note, Origin, Ghost in the Shell S.A.C: 2^nd GIG and SSS. As also stated before, none of these are particularly interesting (They seem to be the American ones just re-encoded for the most part).

So how can I sum up Space Adventure Cobra? If you want to buy the series for the dub produced by Carl Macek or just enjoy love stories, you may enjoy this venture into space. Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend this at all. It’s a messy story about love that doesn’t really hold in a shonen series. There’s plenty of better star crossed love stories and this TMS adventure is certainly not one of those.

Movie: D- (A rather boring and bland movie that offers no real resolution or character development. It’s like a terrible French New Wave film)
Packaging: D (It looks alright but it doesn’t stand out well. I would have given it higher marks if not the two misleading pieces of information about the film itself)
Video Quality: D- (The video looks like it was taken from a bad VHS transfer and is notably bad in both paused and moving on a larger TV)
Audio Quality: B (The soundtrack fit but didn’t stand out too much with a well done group of actors voicing their characters well)
English Dub: B+ (A rather enjoyable dub with all around good acting and logical effects applied to certain characters)
Extras: D (Trailers that don’t advertise their series as something worth investing in, especially the Naruto one)

Overall (not an average): D (Space Adventure Cobra is a film that could be enjoyed while either high or for someone in serious need of a love story. Otherwise, it’s just a shoddy release of an otherwise uninteresting film.)

Gallery and copyright information under ad. All caps are lossless PNGs. (Caps are 768×576 matching the aspect ratio they are meant to be viewed at. Black bars are left on screencaps.)

This show was reviewed using a DVD purchased at retail.

This DVD is labeled to work on Region 2 DVD players on the packaging.

© BUICHI TERSAWA/A-Girl Rights ~ TMS All Rights Reserved Under License to MANGA ENTERTAINMENT, LLC. Produced by TMS ENTERTAINMENT, LTD.

Why Doesn’t Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Look Great On Blu-ray?

Marc — Wed, 12 May 2010 06:05:23 +0000

After looking at my review of Brotherhood on Blu-ray, some people may be wondering… why doesn’t the Blu-ray look pristine? After all, it is a brand new series, shouldn’t it look glorious in 1080p on Blu-ray? Funi even gave it the first ‘Native HD’ tag they’ve ever labeled with. Is it really an upscale and they lied?

Let’s start with that. No, it seems very unlikely that Funimation lied. But then why doesn’t it look good? That is what this article will explain.

For this article, I recommend clicking an image to see it at the full resolution. All images in this article are lossless PNG files since image quality is of importance for this article (and due to it being based more on quality than on color there are no easy to view image comparisons, you’ll have to open the images and compare them.)

As you can see above, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood on Blu-ray doesn’t look like we expect it to. So here is an explanation of why that is.

To start with, let us look at Brotherhood as it is stored on its DVD counterpart.

On DVD video is stored at 720×480 (480p.) When someone is talking about an upscale, it is likely made from an image that looks exactly like this. When you use an upscaling player these images are upscaled, a method of resampling the image and attempting to fill in problem areas by figuring out the colors around them to attempt to make it look its best at 1080p (based on your TV it may upscale to 720p or 1080i, but 1080p is the example we are using since it is Blu-ray’s resolution.) When a company does an upscale, in most cases at least, they use an image that looks very close, but won’t have MPEG2 encoding artifacts (MPEG2 being the type of video all DVDs are.)

You may be wondering why those images look incorrect. It’s because they actually have a digital ‘flag’ that tells your player to stretch them to the proper aspect ratio. Here is a look at both caps stretched to be their proper aspect ratio.

Others may be wondering what any of this actually has to do with the Blu-rays. Just giving background information and showing what they look like on the normal DVD as an example.

Having looked at the DVDs it is time to take a proper look at the same frames taken from the Blu-ray.

Once again, doesn’t look so great. There is stuttering and some pixelation, not to mention edge enhancement. Details and some colors also don’t appear as vivid as you might expect. So once again, the question is why?

Based on looking at information both from its TV run in Japan and the Japanese Blu-rays, it appears it is because Brotherhood was actually animated at 540p.

As for why it was animated at 540p, no idea. There are many potential explanations: a lack of time or limited budget, among other possible reasons. Let’s figure out what the animation being 540p means overall.

It means that the Blu-ray doesn’t have the same level of detail that 1080p or 720p animation would. It looks cleaner and has a bit more detail than the normal DVD does though.

The 540p number was found during the HDTV airing of Brotherhood in Japan and checked again when it came out on Blu-ray. Based on playing with screencaps from the American Blu-ray, the same appears to be true here as well.

So what happens when we take the Blu-ray, and downscale it down to 540p?

Outside of a bit of edge enhancement and a few other things introduced seemingly during the upscale process from 540 to 1080, it looks nearly pristine. So yeah, Brotherhood is 540p.

But Funimation labeled it Native HD… in fact, this is the first time they’ve added a label to indicate if the show is native or upscaled, so why does it say native when it is an upscale (not an upscale from DVD resolution, but a bit higher.)

It is because as far as anyone is concerned, it is 1080. It aired in 1080i on Japanese TV and the Japanese Blu-rays were 1080p. Funimation was likely given 1080p masters from Japan and may have had no knowledge of any of this (conjecture on my part) and even if they did, if the Japanese licensor says these are the 1080p masters, can’t really argue with them that much.

So Brotherhood’s 1080p Blu-rays are actually based on 1080p masters that are based on 540p masters…

But how do we know for sure Funimation didn’t just upscale masters themselves and slap the native tag on there to mislead people?

Let’s compare the Japanese Blu-ray with the American Blu-ray with a different screen cap than the ones I’ve been using.

The top is from the Japanese Blu-ray, the bottom is the American Blu-ray. They are effectively identical. The only noticeable difference is the American Blu-ray is brighter. Older (specifically analog) American and Japanese TVs have slightly different black levels (about a 10% difference.) Why is it still consistently done when Blu-ray and nearly all modern sets are digital nowadays and (as far as I’m aware) that brightness difference doesn’t exist anymore… I’m not the guy to ask about that because I have absolutely no idea.

The story of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood’s resolution ended up being a slightly more complex one than many people would imagine. Not technically HD, but not a straight upscale from a 480 master.

You have to admit it is ironic and a bit funny that after many of us asked Funimation to label their Blu-rays that the first disk to get a label would have an odd twist to it. Funimation definitely didn’t lie, but in this specific case, the contents aren’t what many of us would consider ‘Native HD’ either. Although even that has become murky. Quite a few HD games aren’t even 720p. The recent ‘Call of Duty’ games are all 600p, Halo 3 is 640p, and the recent Ghostbusters video game was 720p on Xbox 360 but 576p on Playstation 3. And all of those are labeled as HD games. This is one people are going to have to decide yourself.

Do you consider Brotherhood HD or not?

If you’d like to read a review of the Blu-ray of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, we actually have one (it is actually what ended up leading to this article.) Feel free to have a read: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood- Part One (Blu-ray), Early Review

Fullmetal Alchemist – © HIROMU ARAKAWA/SQUARE ENIX, MBS, ANX, BONES, dentsu 2004. Licensed by FUNimation® Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood- Part One (Blu-ray), Early Review

Marc — Tue, 11 May 2010 05:40:48 +0000

One of the more popular anime and manga series of the past decade returns.

Yes yes, Fullmetal Alchemist returns. Rather than a sequel to the first anime series, this new series is taking the true to the manga route. Is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood already a shining piece of steel in its first 13 episodes, or does it come up a little… short?

My copy of Brotherhood didn’t come with packaging so I can’t review it, but felt it was worth mentioning that it is confirmed from scans that this is the first Funimation release that specifically has a mention on the package of if it is native HD or an upscale (this one is native HD for those wondering.) Hopefully this will be used for future upscale releases also.

The menu for Brotherhood has a very nice design (the same, once again, can’t be said for my photos of them though.) The background to the menu is random video from the series, while the actual active area of the menu looks like ripped paper. If you look closely there is also small grey text that appears to be the amounts of elements in the human body. It’s a nice little piece of flair to add to the menu that many may never notice. Sub-menus are setup the same with smaller text. Instead of an X button to back out through menus, there is an alchemy circle. The pop-up menu is identical to the main menu minus the normal changes such as a close pop-up button. It’s a clean menu with a few nice touches, but it seems less elegant than recent Funimation Blu-ray menus.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood as a series has quite a bit to live up to. The original FMA was one of the more fondly remembered shows of the past decade. Being pushed as a true to the manga series makes it a bit odd to see that the first episode is filler. Logically it makes sense: The majority of people who are likely to watch this likely watched the last series and know who everyone is, so you need a way to introduce everything to new people without making the fans bored feeling they’ve already seen it before. This tends to be the main problem with Brotherhood in general though. These episodes are, for the most part, before the original anime began to diverge from the manga. It makes Brotherhood almost seem like looking in a fun-house mirror: you recognize it, but there are a few curves and lines out of place.

It drags Brotherhood down heavily in that a good percentage of it so far is just ‘FMA in widescreen.’ Sure, like I said, there are differences, but it was all covered in the last series. It makes the show seem very slow, and at times I found myself more curious at noticing color differences between this series and the old series than I was paying attention to a story I already knew.

Brotherhood definitely isn’t a bad series, but without much new content yet, it feels too much like ‘done it before.’ The enjoyable characters help keep these early episodes from becoming a drag. With things starting to diverge, I expect the next set will be far better, but for now, Fullmetal Alchemist isn’t quite as great as some fans might expect. But how much can I really complain when I still enjoyed it?

The video for Brotherhood is in a single word… disappointing. Brotherhood is 1080p with the AVC codec at 14429 kbps (average bitrate of the first episode.) Despite being brand new and a name franchise, Brotherhood has a very disappointing Blu-ray. Lines are often pixelated and choppy, and the video overall has a very fuzzy and murky feel to it. Colors at times also appear fuzzy and not clean. I’m not sure how this happened (whether Funimation did something to their masters or if they were given sub-par masters) or if the Japanese Blu-ray looked similar, but this was just a disappointment.

It’s possible I’m expecting to much and expanding on minor flaws, but I don’t think so. The video isn’t unwatchable but it is far below what we expect from a series that began to air in 2009.

Edit- It has since been confirmed via screenshots of the Japanese Blu-ray that all the problems here are also on that Blu-ray.

The audio is more like it. Both languages get lossless audio and sound very good. The English track sounds slightly richer overall. Has a bit more of a ‘boom boom’ to it if you know what I mean. A show like Brotherhood with quite a few special audio effects needs audio like this, because it makes everything sound large and fantastic. Right below is detailed info on each audio track based on a scan of the first episode (average bitrates).

English Track- Dolby TrueHD Audio (lossless), 5.1, 24-bit, 48 kHz, 3186 kbps (AC3 Core: 2.0, 48 kHz, 448 kbps)
Japanese Track- Dolby TrueHD Audio (lossless), 2.0, 16-bit, 48 kHz, 813 kbps (AC3 Core: 2.0, 48 kHz, 192 kbps)

Brotherhood is about the dub people would expect from a new FMA. It’s a great dub, but perhaps the most interesting thing is noticing differences in characters. While two characters have new actors, the rest of the cast of the original FMA returns. Vic Mignogna sounds largely the same as Ed, and being the main returning role, that is probably a rock that gives a lot of dub fans something to attach themselves to. While some characters, like Ed, sound nearly the same, other characters who have the same actor sound quite a bit different. Hughes for example is still played by Sonny Strait, but this version of Hughes sounds a smidge more like Usopp.

Then you have the two characters who have new actors. Starting with Scar: J. Michael Tatum steps into the role of Scar quite well (having played the character in the Premium Collection OVA) with a voice that sounds a bit deeper than I recall Scar sounding (although that could be memories playing tricks on me.) It’s a good new voice for the character. The voice that most people will be listening intently for though is Al. Aaron Dismuke grew out of being able to play Al, and while the OVA last year found a few ways to fake it (including according to the commentary, lifting audio of Dismuke from all of FMA, including the video games for the Homunculi VS Alchemists short), a new full series of FMA required a replacement (although it has been confirmed quite a few times that Dismuke will appear in Brotherhood as someone else later.) Maxey Whitehead steps into the role of Al quite well. The voice she uses it relatively similar to the old Al voice but distinct in a few ways (including sounding a bit younger.) And for all those Al fans, the cast and crew confirm in one of the commentaries that Whitehead did indeed use the bowl when she played Al. The dub overall is as good as the dub the original FMA got, and Mignogna and Whitehead being the main cast members keep the quality and energy high.

Brotherhood has a few extras that go beyond what we expect for an anime release nowadays. To start off with we have the standard clean opening and closing songs. I quite enjoy both these songs and the animation that goes with them, so having the normal clean versions is nice (seeing the hand drawn style animation in the closing without the credits is quite interesting.) We also get two commentary tracks: For episode one we have Mike McFarland, Colleen Clinkenbeard, Travis Willingham, and Maxey Whitehead and for episode 10 we have Caitlin Glass, Sonny Strait, and Laura Bailey. Both commentary tracks are fun to listen to and give quite a bit of information about the dubbing of Brotherhood and even some tidbits of the original FMA dub (not to mention Sonny Strait’s love of brain tonic.) It’s a bit above what we expect for an anime release and it’s nice to hear everyone involved be so excited about the content.

The retail release also includes a few Brotherhood postcards. Lack of postcards had no effect on the review of the extras.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood hasn’t quite reached the heights of the original FMA, partially because before it can get to new content it has to tread through the original content. While it is still fun, it can definitely drag. FMA fans are almost guaranteed to love it though, as even with all the problems I had with it, I came out smiling and looking forward to more.

Show: B- (It’s still FMA, even if it doesn’t break any new ground. People expecting new content might feel it all goes very slowly as far as this set goes.)
Packaging: N/A
Video Quality: C (Disappointing video for a brand new series. For those who care, I contemplated every grade from D+ to C+, so your mileage may vary.)
Audio Quality: A (Sounds good. Some great boom boom and sound effects)
English Dub: A (In every way the equal of the original FMA dub.)
Extras: B (Clean opening and closing are nice, but the two commentaries are really gems.)

Overall (not an average): B- (While it is fun, there are still too many issues with these early episodes to say they are great. The disks themselves aren’t terrible, but sub-par video hurts it overall.)

Gallery and copyright information under ad. All caps are lossless PNGs, feel free to request more. (Caps are 1920×1080 matching the resolution they are stored on disk, and meant to be viewed at.)

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is available to watch streaming for free (in various combinations of subbed and dubbed at Funimation Video, Youtube, TV.com, [adult swim] video, and Hulu. The first episode is embedded near the top of this review subtitled for your convenience and enjoyment (even though it is filler… I still can’t believe the first episode of a ‘true to the manga’ adaption is filler… I mean… it’s weird.)

This show was reviewed using a screener without retail packaging.

This Blu-ray is labeled to work in Region A and Region B on the disks.

For an explanation of why Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood doesn’t look as pristine on Blu-ray as you might expect, I went ahead and wrote an article with a detailed explanation.: Why Doesn’t Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Look Great On Blu-ray?

Fullmetal Alchemist – © HIROMU ARAKAWA/SQUARE ENIX, MBS, ANX, BONES, dentsu 2004. Licensed by FUNimation® Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Dragon Ball Z Kai: Part One (DVD), Early Review

Marc — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:03:32 +0000

I bet you are wondering why I’m reviewing Kai again…

I decided since I have both on hand to not leave our DVD only friends hanging without proper caps and a review. When it is appropriate I’ll be using text from the Blu-ray, but anything that is different for the DVD version (packaging, video quality, audio, etc) will be freshly written. And as a small note: Any grades I give here will be specific to what is expected or wanted from a DVD, so if a video or audio grade is higher here than it was in the Blu-ray review, it does not mean the DVD is superior. And if you want to read the Blu-ray review first: Dragon Ball Z Kai: Part One (Blu-ray), Early Review

Z Kai has the packaging we tend to expect from Funimation at this point with a few flairs. The slipcover has relatively weak cardstock with some foil and texture on it. The front has a nice clean shot of Goku with a white background, with all the various title information and company logos on an orange-goldish strip on the side (minus the Z Kai logo, which is in the bottom left cover.) It is a surprisingly classy path to be taken for Z Kai considering past Z releases often looked like the equivalent of someone in a room jumping up and down screaming “LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME!” This manner of packaging looks far nicer looking at it. The back cover is entirely in landscape (sideways.) It has a picture of Goku along with a tag-line, a few small screen-shots, and the rest is pure information. The back cover is accurate to the contents (with a bit of puffing up of the contents.) The only problem with the back cover is the font used is far to small in nearly every case (although it is worth mentioning it is far more readable than the slipcover for the Blu-ray.)

Inside the slipcover is two thinpaks. One thinpak has an image of Vegeta and the other has an image of Raditz. The images are actually on the back of the case inserts, and slightly goes over to the front. The front itself has a field of stars. Both are very clean and well designed. The thinpak itself is clear, and on the opposite side we get an episode list of what is on the DVD in that case. The star field also makes a repeat appearance. The packaging overall is a slightly fancier version of what we expect at this point.

The menus for Z Kai on DVD are designed entirely different from the menus on the Blu-rays. Instead of a small white strip we get a large orange strip with a static picture of Shen Long. It’s clean and a nice looking menu. Sub-menus have orange text with character art on the side. It’s a very clean and well done menu.

Dragon Ball Z Kai is in no way a new series. Rather it is an attempt to make a new product from what Toei already had on hand by removing the filler from Z. This in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Z was known for long bouts of filler, often stretching fights that could have been done in one episode, to needing multiple DVDs to hold them. So at the core of Z Kai is the show we all know and love, simply with the fat trimmed off. The remaining footage was put through another round of remastering by Toei, not to mention getting entirely new audio. The new music sounds like an odd mix of ’sorta sounds like DBZ’ and ‘modern shonen.’ At times it sounds great, especially when music reminds you of the Z music, at other times it is just sort of… there. On both sides of the Pacific the vocal tracks from Z were thrown out and redone with the original casts (with a few cast members replaced for reasons ranging from death to ‘because we can.’) It is effectively a whole new way to watch and experience what is likely the most popular shonen anime ever created.

There are a few primary flaws with how Z Kai has been put together though. The first is that when short seconds of filler were used to fill out a scene, characters would move around. This becomes obvious when all of a sudden one character will be on the other side of a room without them walking around. It isn’t the biggest deal, but it can be annoying if you happen to notice it. The second is that Dragon Ball Z was not the beginning. Instead of starting Kai at the beginning of Dragon Ball, they skip over the initial one-third of the manga. For a version advertised everywhere as a version true to Toriyama’s vision and manga, starting 17 volumes into a 42 volume story just isn’t right. Sure, we get a quick overview of Dragon Ball in three minutes at the very beginning (not to mention this overview is after a scene that was never in the manga… so the ‘true to the manga’ version of Z begins with filler…) but it is just very annoying to skip over Dragon Ball. I don’t enjoy Z Kai nearly as much as I do Z. In general it just feels like things are missing, and it’s a bit annoying knowing instead of Toei just doing a new series from scratch, they just chopped Z up and gave it a new title. I can definitely understand plenty of new fans coming to Dragon Ball through Z Kai, though older fans will have to decide their thoughts on Z Kai themselves.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Z Kai is that we are getting it so quickly. It only started airing in Japan a little more than a year ago, and only started getting a home video release a bit over half a year ago.

The video in Z Kai is likely the best Z has ever looked on DVD. It’s encoded at 480p based on 1080p masters. Z Kai won’t fool anyone into thinking it is a new show, but it is a good remaster with a few quirks based on the fact that they chose to add small bits of new animation.

Starting with the original animation, it just needs to be said. Dragon Ball Z was never a high budget show with a high level of detail. But the new remaster, and the lower resolution of DVD leaves everything looking clean and really nice. Very rarely does it appear crisp and sharp, but everything looks quite fantastic.

The redrawn animation is a mixed bag in every way. Sometimes it has been traced in such a way that it just looks like crap (with details drawn or colored wrong), other times it looks decent enough that you can mistake it for the original animation. It never looks ‘great’; at best you can hope that it doesn’t look bad.

The brand new animation is only used for the intro, outro, and eye-catches. It’s sharp, bright, bold, and it honestly makes me angry. Instead of getting a new series that looks like this, we basically got Z with a new intro. Watching this new animation shows the biggest flaw with Z Kai… they redid everything… EVERYTHING…. (music, vocal tracks, intro, etc.) except the animation in the show. Unfortunately even this animation isn’t perfect. Often there is very low detail, or characters being drawn poorly.

It is also worth mentioning that the American Z Kai DVD appears to be taken from a source prior to any tweaking being done. So the color appears darker than either Blu-ray. This leads to colors that appear slightly bolder. It also avoids the washing out of brighter colors that happens on both Blu-rays.

The lower resolution of DVD, combined with less a processed picture leads to a significantly different visual experience than the Blu-rays. No doubt there will be many discussions about if the different colors of the DVD lead to a better viewing experience.

The audio for Z Kai is very good. English gets a 448k Dolby 5.1 track. Japanese gets a 192k Dolby 2.0 track. Both tracks are quite crisp. The English track is a touch louder and has a bit more bass to it. While not as clean as lossless Blu-ray audio, both of these are definitely the best audio tracks anything Z has ever had on DVD.

Z Kai gets a dub that at the core is a complete 180 from their Z dub. Everyone involved seems to be giving extra effort to make this THE dub to listen to. Instead of a rock and roll soundtrack, the original Japanese music is kept, and the intro and outro songs are dubbed. The songs themselves sound like the best dubbed songs Funimation has done yet (and is worth mentioning with it being done less and less.)

The script is far more accurate to what is in the Japanese script than the prior dub. Some things are still rewritten to sound better in English, but tone and meaning is almost always kept. The only time things seem to be rewritten is that some jokes are altered to jokes that are more understandable to English speakers. The only thing worth mentioning is that a few prior dub names are kept.

As for the cast themselves, everyone is giving a great effort, and it is especially interesting to compare some of the cast members who weren’t necessarily great (or even decent) actors to how much they’ve grown over the years. Dub fans will be happy they have the majority of their cast back, and we may even see a few DBZ dub haters give Z Kai a chance with its much better script. It’s especially worth noting that Chris Sabat gives us a Piccolo that sounds quite a bit different than the one he has voiced for a long time. He speaks with a far less gravely voice that comes across far smoother than the previous voice. It’s one of the few voices I felt necessary to bring up. The others have to do with cast changes… The primary cast change people will notice is that Stephanie Nadolny has been replaced as Gohan by Colleen Clinkenbeard. Considering Nadolny had consistently played Gohan for a long time (along with also playing younger Goku quite a bit) it’s a surprise to hear a completely different voice (especially since Nadolny was in games last year.) Clinkenbeard does a good job as Gohan though, any negativity is purely in hearing a new voice in the role. The other cast change is that Kyle Hebert is no longer the narrator. As someone who used to watch DBZ on Toonami all the time, this may be a more jarring change than Gohan honestly. It’s just odd to hear a different voice. This seems to be a change made to fit with the different tone of the Z Kai dub, since Hebert is still in the cast. Luckily the new narrator, Doc Morgan, is up to the challenge. It comes across almost as an 80s cartoon narrator. It’s an interesting change that shows overall just how much the Z Kai dub is different than Z’s dub.

Z Kai has very few extras in this initial set. We get clean versions of the intro and outro. That’s it for this set.

Dragon Ball Z Kai has brought Dragon Ball back to mainstream popularity in Japan. While it never got that popular here in the USA, it’ll be interesting to see how a shorter and more concise version will do, considering it is getting both DVD and Blu-ray releases, and will be airing both on cable and Saturday mornings on a broadcast network.

The package Funimation put together for the first 13 episodes is as close to perfect for Kai as we could expect or hope for. In the case of the DVD we actually get one up on the Japanese DVDs in that ours are the proper aspect ratio.

Z Kai definitely isn’t perfect, far from it. But it’s Dragon Ball. And even if it was Dragon Ball at its worst, it would still be worth the time for any fan. I can definitely imagine this bringing in a lot of new fans.

Show: B- (It’s DBZ but shorter. It isn’t bad in any way, it is just hard to think of it as awesome when most fans already have it sitting on their shelves already. I wanted to give it an even lower grade, but it’s still DBZ, and it is still oh so much fun to watch.)
Packaging: B+ (It’s a nice package, but it isn’t anything special.)
Video Quality: A- (The video is the best Z has ever looked on DVD. There are very few things that could be improved.)
Audio Quality: A (Everything is clean and crisp.)
English Dub: A- (It’s the best dub DBZ has gotten. The only real flaw is a few holdovers from the prior dub as far as name changing goes.)
Extras: D (Clean intro and outro are average, but Z Kai screams for commentaries and look backs and any number of other extras.)

Overall (not an average): B+ (It’s DBZ. Even not necessarily liking Kai, I found myself watching episodes when I should have been writing the review.)

Gallery and copyright information under ad. All caps are lossless PNGs taken in MPC-HC, feel free to request more. (Caps are sized 640×480 so as to display properly on computer monitors, they were modified to this resolution via Photoshop CS4 as MPC-HC takes screen captures at 720×480 on the disc. Having the caps be 640×480 makes them appear at the properly intended aspect ratio. The menu screen shots are 853×480 for the same reason.)

This show was reviewed using a screener in retail packaging.

This DVD is labeled to work in Region 1 and Region 4 on both the packaging and disks.

To see a comparison between the American Blu-ray and DVD and the Japanese Blu-ray of Dragon Ball Z Kai, which all have slightly different colors, please take a look at our new feature: Dragon Ball Z Kai- Color Differences Comparison

We also did a review of Dragon Ball Z Kai: Part One on Blu-ray. If you have a Blu-ray player and need help deciding which to buy, check the review out, it might help: Dragon Ball Z Kai: Part One (Blu-ray), Early Review

Truthfully I hated the very concept of what they were doing with Kai rather than giving us a new series. And boy did I have some rants about it that I was looking forward to give. Some made it in various ways, but as much as I wanted to fanboy froth at the mouth, I had to relook over what I was writing when I kept noticing I was paying attention and watching the show in the background while I was writing the review and just sitting back and enjoying it. It really is worth a look despite some meh video and the general distaste of how Toei went about editing Z together into a ‘new’ series. (At the very bottom under copyright is a special surprise, so go take a look!)

Dragon Ball Z Kai – ©Bird Studio/Shueisha, Toei Animation. Film©2009 Toei Animation Co., Ltd. Licensed by FUNimation® Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Whew….. Toei really could have spent more time on the opening, like I said, there are some really ugly moments. It looked bad at 1080p, but I think it may actually look worse at 480p…

Dragon Ball Z Kai- Color Differences Comparison

Marc — Wed, 05 May 2010 08:18:36 +0000

After doing the review of Dragon Ball Z Kai on Blu-ray I decided to check the DVD. Very quickly I noticed a difference in colors in the remastered Z footage. When I showed some screen shots to a friend to find out about the Japanese Kai Blu-ray, he actually ran it over right then so I could take a screen shot for a comparison.

I’ll let the image and my notes on it speak for themselves. Feel free to share. I didn’t include the Japanese DVD because I don’t know anyone who has it. Click on it for full size.

Each version has its own odd quirks and I’m quite sure arguments over which of the three has superior colors will go on for years. It’d also be interesting to find out who tweaked each version and why any tweaks were made (did Funi tweak their versions or did Toei? If so, why the Blu-ray and not the DVD?)

After doing that image comparison, I decided to check the intro, which has entirely new animation. Each one is different in the intro also, but in different ways than in the episode itself, which suggests each intro was tweaked separately from the episode. (Click to see full size)

For the remastered footage you could argue any of them could be better based on how you feel about color in general, but for the brand new animation, the American Blu-ray clearly seems superior.

It’s worth mentioning that a slight difference in brightness between an American disk and a Japanese disk is normal. Japanese and American TVs have different black levels, so tweaking of the brightness is normally done to make them match when being viewed, but this doesn’t appear to be the tweaking that caused these differences (especially since there are three clearly different examples instead of two.)

Think I should update the first image with other DVD versions of Dragon Ball Z for comparisons sake?

Update- I chose to leave the original comparisons up as they are more relevant seeing as they all have the same and proper aspect ratio, but I’ve made an updated version that adds the Japanese DVD into the mix.

Thanks to Hujio from Kanzentai for the lossless captures of the proper frames.

The show content itself is interesting in that there is a slight addition of footage on the side and that (once again) the colors are different.

Although frankly the shot of the intro is a bit crazier

Yeah… it’s pretty terrible. It is definitely the worst of the four in this case. It definitely makes it appear that DVDs from Toei were a late addition to the plan for Kai in Japan, as no care seemed to have been taken with the encode at all.

If you’d like to read a review of the Blu-ray of Dragon Ball Z Kai, we actually have one (it is actually what ended up leading to this article.) Feel free to have a read: Dragon Ball Z Kai: Part One (Blu-ray), Early Review

Dragon Ball Z Kai: Part One (Blu-ray), Early Review

Marc — Wed, 05 May 2010 03:50:04 +0000

The franchise that will never die returns, but on Blu-ray in a new ‘refreshed’ version.

Yes, Dragon Ball Z returns as Dragon Ball Z Kai. After stacks of releases in the USA, including the Dragon Boxes, is the modern refresh of Z on Blu-ray the new high bar for the series in the USA?

The packaging for Z Kai is quite nice. We start off with a slipcover made out of basic card stock. It’s worth mentioning quickly that there are a few things textured on both the front and back of the slipcover. The front has a nice clean shot of Goku with a white background, with all the various title information and company logos on an orange-goldish strip on the side (minus the Z Kai logo, which is in the bottom left cover.) It is a surprisingly classy path to be taken for Z Kai considering past Z releases often looked like the equivalent of someone in a room jumping up and down screaming “LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME!” This manner of packaging looks far nicer looking at it. The back cover is entirely in landscape (sideways.) It has a picture of Goku along with a tag-line, a few small screen-shots, and the rest is pure information. The back cover is accurate to the contents (with a bit of puffing up of the contents.) The only problem with the back cover is the font used is far to small in nearly every case. Having the font be so small means that the matrix of Blu-ray information sort of bleeds together and is hard to read.

As for the case itself: the insert is exactly the same as the slipcover, although here the smaller font is easier to read due to better printing quality on the paper material used for the insert. The Blu-ray case is a standard Blu-ray case used for material with two disks: one on the left, one on the right. As is standard for these cases, the disks are held firmly, but you don’t have to fight to get them out. You can see through the case to the other side of the insert to see a picture of Vegeta along with an episode list. The blue plastic and the small font used for the episode list makes it nearly impossible to read from a reasonable distance though. While not part of the case, it is also worth mentioning that the plastic strip you have to remove to get into the case has the Japanese title “Dragon Ball Kai” instead of the slightly altered American title. Overall the packaging is quite nice, but a few problems with font size

And oh yes…. this release stops the Funimation tradition going back to the VHS days of having an image montage of some sort on the side of Dragon Ball products so that when they are side by side on your shelf you have a neat image showing off your collection. It isn’t necessarily a negative, but I think it was worth a mention.

The menu is interesting in that it is both a standard Funimation Blu-ray menu, but has a few noticeable differences to what we expect from them (and as always, I can’t capture BD menus, so horrible photographs instead. Although I made an attempt to do some minor color correction on the photos so they don’t look quite so terrible.) The audio for the menu is an action-adventure sounding song that goes quite well over the menu (although an instrumental of the opening or closing song may have been a better choice.) The menu itself is a small white strip with orange text (with a very small orange strip on the left side.) Under the menu are random clips from the series. It’s a very clean looking menu, and the only real problem is (once again) the text is very small for some reason. The pop-up menu is nearly the same, but makes a few relevant small changes (adds a close pop-up menu option, go to main menu, etc.) It’s a clean and classy menu that would benefit from a larger font. The one thing different to most Funimation releases is the menu is actually 4:3. Funimation switched to nearly all 16:9 menus quite awhile ago, and this is the first 4:3 menu they have used on a Blu-ray to my knowledge.

Dragon Ball Z Kai is in no way a new series. Rather it is an attempt to make a new product from what Toei already had on hand by removing the filler from Z. This in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Z was known for long bouts of filler, often stretching fights that could have been done in one episode, to needing multiple DVDs to hold them. So at the core of Z Kai is the show we all know and love, simply with the fat trimmed off. The remaining footage was put through another round of remastering by Toei, not to mention getting entirely new audio. The new music sounds like an odd mix of ’sorta sounds like DBZ’ and ‘modern shonen.’ At times it sounds great, especially when music reminds you of the Z music, at other times it is just sort of… there. On both sides of the Pacific the vocal tracks from Z were thrown out and redone with the original casts (with a few cast members replaced for reasons ranging from death to ‘because we can.’) It is effectively a whole new way to watch and experience what is likely the most popular shonen anime ever created.

There are a few primary flaws with how Z Kai has been put together though. The first is that when short seconds of filler were used to fill out a scene, characters would move around. This becomes obvious when all of a sudden one character will be on the other side of a room without them walking around. It isn’t the biggest deal, but it can be annoying if you happen to notice it. The second is that Dragon Ball Z was not the beginning. Instead of starting Kai at the beginning of Dragon Ball, they skip over the initial one-third of the manga. For a version advertised everywhere as a version true to Toriyama’s vision and manga, starting 17 volumes into a 42 volume story just isn’t right. Sure, we get a quick overview of Dragon Ball in three minutes at the very beginning (not to mention this overview is after a scene that was never in the manga… so the ‘true to the manga’ version of Z begins with filler…) but it is just very annoying to skip over Dragon Ball. I don’t enjoy Z Kai nearly as much as I do Z. In general it just feels like things are missing, and it’s a bit annoying knowing instead of Toei just doing a new series from scratch, they just chopped Z up and gave it a new title. I can definitely understand plenty of new fans coming to Dragon Ball through Z Kai, though older fans will have to decide their thoughts on Z Kai themselves.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Z Kai is that we are getting it so quickly. It only started airing in Japan a little more than a year ago, and started getting Blu-rays a bit more than half a year ago. It means that for the first time we are getting a Blu-ray of a show still airing in Japan.

The video in Z Kai is an extremely mixed bag. Z Kai is 1080p with the AVC codec at 19988 kbps (average bitrate of the first episode.) Z Kai has a few different kinds of animation in any given episode, so let’s start there. The first and primary kind is animation from Dragon Ball Z. This is animation that has been recaptured from the original film stock, remastered, and had color tweaking. The second kind is animation from DBZ that has been traced over, and replaces the animation it was traced over. The final kind is brand new modern animation.

Starting with the original animation, it just needs to be said. Dragon Ball Z was never a high budget show with a high level of detail. The animation just does not hold up at this level of detail. Toei also appears to have done its best to remove grain and tweak colors to make it look ‘nicer’, but this just leads to everything looking sorta fuzzy at times (especially in close shots.) Sometimes you get semi sharp lines with bold color, other times you get some of that fuzz.

The redrawn animation is a mixed bag in every way. Sometimes it has been traced in such a way that it just looks like crap (with details drawn or colored wrong), other times it looks decent enough that you can mistake it for the original animation. It never looks ‘great’; at best you can hope that it doesn’t look bad.

The brand new animation is only used for the intro, outro, and eye-catches. It’s sharp, bright, bold, and it honestly makes me angry. Instead of getting a new series that looks like this, we basically got Z with a new intro. Watching this new animation shows the biggest flaw with Z Kai… they redid everything… EVERYTHING…. (music, vocal tracks, intro, etc.) except the animation in the show. Unfortunately even this animation isn’t perfect. Often there is very low detail, or characters being drawn poorly.

The video quality overall for Z Kai is likely the best Z, in any form, will ever look (unless they do a new series from scratch), but as I said earlier, it just doesn’t hold up.

The audio for Z Kai is the exact opposite of the video. Both English and Japanese get lossless tracks that were newly recorded. The audio is almost always crisp and clean. The only thing honestly worth mentioning is that the audio in the English track seems significantly louder. No real problems worth mentioning though. The audio for Z Kai is absolutely a delight. When you consider how bad Z audio has sounded at times, having it completely redone and crisp is something absolutely worth smiling about. Right below is detailed info on each audio track based on a scan of the first episode (average bitrates).

English Track- Dolby TrueHD Audio (lossless), 5.1, 24-bit, 48 kHz, 3037 kbps (AC3 Core: 2.0, 48 kHz, 448 kbps)
Japanese Track- Dolby TrueHD Audio (lossless), 2.0, 16-bit, 48 kHz, 752 kbps (AC3 Core: 2.0, 48 kHz, 192 kbps)

Z Kai gets a dub that at the core is a complete 180 from their Z dub. Everyone involved seems to be giving extra effort to make this THE dub to listen to. Instead of a rock and roll soundtrack, the original Japanese music is kept, and the intro and outro songs are dubbed. The songs themselves sound like the best dubbed songs Funimation has done yet (and is worth mentioning with it being done less and less.)

The script is far more accurate to what is in the Japanese script than the prior dub. Some things are still rewritten to sound better in English, but tone and meaning is almost always kept. The only time things seem to be rewritten is that some jokes are altered to jokes that are more understandable to English speakers. The only thing worth mentioning is that a few prior dub names are kept.

As for the cast themselves, everyone is giving a great effort, and it is especially interesting to compare some of the cast members who weren’t necessarily great (or even decent) actors to how much they’ve grown over the years. Dub fans will be happy they have the majority of their cast back, and we may even see a few DBZ dub haters give Z Kai a chance with its much better script. It’s especially worth noting that Chris Sabat gives us a Piccolo that sounds quite a bit different than the one he has voiced for a long time. He speaks with a far less gravely voice that comes across far smoother than the previous voice. It’s one of the few voices I felt necessary to bring up. The others have to do with cast changes… The primary cast change people will notice is that Stephanie Nadolny has been replaced as Gohan by Colleen Clinkenbeard. Considering Nadolny had consistently played Gohan for a long time (along with also playing younger Goku quite a bit) it’s a surprise to hear a completely different voice (especially since Nadolny was in games last year.) Clinkenbeard does a good job as Gohan though, any negativity is purely in hearing a new voice in the role. The other cast change is that Kyle Hebert is no longer the narrator. As someone who used to watch DBZ on Toonami all the time, this may be a more jarring change than Gohan honestly. It’s just odd to hear a different voice. This seems to be a change made to fit with the different tone of the Z Kai dub, since Hebert is still in the cast. Luckily the new narrator, Doc Morgan, is up to the challenge. It comes across almost as an 80s cartoon narrator. It’s an interesting change that shows overall just how much the Z Kai dub is different than Z’s dub.

Z Kai has very few extras in this initial set. We get clean versions of the intro and outro. That’s it for this set. The one thing worth mentioning is that the clean versions do not have lossless audio.

Dragon Ball Z Kai has brought Dragon Ball back to mainstream popularity in Japan. While it never got that popular here in the USA, it’ll be interesting to see how a shorter and more concise version will do, considering it is getting both DVD and Blu-ray releases, and will be airing both on cable and Saturday mornings on a broadcast network.

The package Funimation put together for the first 13 episodes is as close to perfect for Kai as we could expect or hope for. The video appears to be on par with what I’ve seen of the Japanese release and both languages get lossless tracks. The packaging is even quite nice.

Z Kai definitely isn’t perfect, far from it. But it’s Dragon Ball. And even if it was Dragon Ball at its worst, it would still be worth the time for any fan. I can definitely imagine this bringing in a lot of new fans.

Show: B- (It’s DBZ but shorter. It isn’t bad in any way, it is just hard to think of it as awesome when most fans already have it sitting on their shelves already. I wanted to give it an even lower grade, but it’s still DBZ, and it is still oh so much fun to watch.)
Packaging: B+ (It’s a nice package, but small fonts ruin it a bit.)
Video Quality: C+ (The video honestly isn’t that good. Nothing wrong with the disk itself, it’s just old low budget animation. Your mileage may vary on this one based on your expectations.)
Audio Quality: A (Everything is clean and crisp.)
English Dub: A- (It’s the best dub DBZ has gotten. The only real flaw is a few holdovers from the prior dub as far as name changing goes.)
Extras: D (Clean intro and outro are average, but Z Kai screams for commentaries and look backs and any number of other extras.)

Overall (not an average): B+ (It’s DBZ. Even not necessarily liking Kai, I found myself watching episodes when I should have been writing the review.)

Gallery and copyright information under ad. All caps are lossless PNGs, feel free to request more. (Caps are 1140×1080 matching the resolution they are stored on disk, and meant to be viewed at. Black bars on the sides were cropped off.)

This show was reviewed using a screener in retail packaging.

This Blu-ray is labeled to work in Region A and Region B on both the packaging and disks.

To see a comparison between the American Blu-ray and DVD and the Japanese Blu-ray of Dragon Ball Z Kai, which all have slightly different colors, please take a look at our new feature: Dragon Ball Z Kai- Color Differences Comparison

Truthfully I hated the very concept of what they were doing with Kai rather than giving us a new series. And boy did I have some rants about it that I was looking forward to give. Some made it in various ways, but as much as I wanted to fanboy froth at the mouth, I had to relook over what I was writing when I kept noticing I was paying attention and watching the show in the background while I was writing the review and just sitting back and enjoying it. It really is worth a look despite some meh video and the general distaste of how Toei went about editing Z together into a ‘new’ series. (At the very bottom under copyright is a special surprise, so go take a look!)

Dragon Ball Z Kai – ©Bird Studio/Shueisha, Toei Animation. Film©2009 Toei Animation Co., Ltd. Licensed by FUNimation® Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Whew….. Toei really could have spent more time on the opening, like I said, there are some really ugly moments.